Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1887-10-28
LIFE AND BUSINESS IN SOUTH
AMERICA,

phere." These extracts will doubtless
prove of interest to our readers:
During the last twenty-five years the
population of the Argentine Republic
has increased 154 per cent, while that of
the United States has increased but 70
per cent, and the city of Buenos Ayres
is growing faster than Minneapolis or
Denver. Last year it received $4,000
immigrants from Europe, and the natural
increase is very large. The newcomers
are mostly Italians and Basques, with
sprinkling of Germans, Swiss and
Swedes. TO tempt the immigrants into
the agricultural districts the government
has enacted land laws even more liberal
than ours. Each head of family is
entitled to $50 acres free, and as much
more as he desires to purchase, to limit
of 1900 acres, at about seventy-five cents
an acre in our money. Or the settler
may acquire 1900 acres free after five
years by planting 200 acres to grain and
twenty-four acres to timber. Free trans
portation from Buenos Ayres to the
place of location is granted to all settlers
and their families, exemption from taxa
ton for ten years, and colonization
societies are organized which issues
bonds guaranteed by the government,
the proceeds of which are loaned to the
settlers in sums not greater than $1,000,
for five years, with interest at six per
cent, upon the cultivation of a certain
amount of land and the erection Of a
certain amount of improvements. The
results of these beneticent laws are con-
81 cuous. In 1886 nearly nine hundred
thousand acres of wild land were
ploughed and planted. One firm in
Buenos Ayres sold 1900 reapers manu-
featured in the United States, and other
firms a lesser number; elevators are be-
ing erected upon the banks of the rivers,
from which wheat is loaded into vessels
for Brazil and Europe, and the average
crop was twenty-five bushels of wheat
to the acre.
SIN 1885 there were forty-one million
sheep in the United States, seventytwo
millions in Australia, and one hundred
have two-thirds of sheep to every in
habitant; in the Argentine Republic there
are twenty-five sheep, and in Uruguay
forty sheep, to every man, woman and
child. We have forty millions of horned
cattle to population of sixty millions
the Argentine Republic and Uruguay
have thirty-eight millions of cattle to a
population of four and half millions.
In Uruguay, with a population of five
hundred thousand souls, there are eight
millions of cattle, twenty millions of
sheep, two million horses, or sixty head
of stock for each man, woman and child
Fifteen million dollars has been invested
in wire fences in Uruguay alone, and
more than twice as much in the Argen-
tine Republic. In either of the countries
COW can be bought for five dollars, a
steer fattened for the market for ten or
twelve dollars, pair of oxen for twenty
five dollars, sheep for fifty or sixty
cents, an ordinary working horse for
eight or ten dollars, and roadster for
twenty-five, a mule for fifteen dollars,
and mare for whatever her hide will
bring. Mares are never broken to sad
die or harness, but are allowed to run
wild in the pastures from the time they
are foaled till they cease to be of value
for breeding, when they are driven to the
a. eli l.;
for their hides. a man who would use a
mare under the saddle or before a wagon
would be considered of unsound mind.
There is a superstition against it.
"The Gaucho (gowcho) of the pampas
is the most interesting character on the
continent. He is the descendant of the
aristocratic Spanish don and the women
of the Guarani race, a species unknown
to any other part of the world, whose
nearest likeness Is the Bedouin of Arabia.
He is at once the most indOlent and the
most active of human beings, for when he
is not in the saddle, devouring space on
the back of tireless broncho, he is sleep
. ing in apathetic Incidence among his mis-
tresses or gambling with his chums.
Half savage and half courtier, the Gau-
/ cho is as courteous as he is cruel, and
will thrum an air on the native mando-
lin with the same ease and nonchalance
as he will murder a fellow-being or
slaughter steer. He recognizes no law
but his own will and the unwritten code
of the cattle range, and all violations of
this code are punished by Punishment OF
death. Whoever offends him must fight
or fly, and his vengeance is as enduring
as it is vigilant. He never shoots OF
strikes with his fist, and his only weap-
ons are the short knife, which is never
absent from his hand or his belt, the
lasso, and the "bolas," implements of
his trade, offensive and defensive.